Last month Dave King posted about ideas in stories, highlighting this technique drawn from long-form journalism: “treat ideas as characters and tell a story about them.” That started me thinking about the Greek slave called Aesop and his pithy fables with their sharp points.

For instance, the tale of the the ass in the lion’s skin. In this fable, a too-clever ass puts on a lion’s skin and walks into town. The townspeople are terrified…until the animal brays, revealing himself as an ass. The moral of the story is, “When you talk too much, you can reveal too much.” Point noted, at least by some of us outside the Beltway.

Now, fables traditionally are brief. Parables generally are too. As with jokes, they are set up quickly and quickly deliver their surprise punch, the moral. Fiction, on the other hand, is a long-form art. Fables and parables can be long too, however, as allegories can as well, which is why we can find them still today on bookstore shelves.

The story patterns of parable, fable and allegory were definitely not retired after Edmund Spenser and John Bunyan. Their methods can be found in fiction such as 1984, Animal Farm, The Pearl, Lord of the Flies, Siddhartha, Watership Down, The Alchemist, The Thief of Always, The Time Keeper, Eyes Wide Open, The Life of Pi, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and many others.

We all enjoy such tales but few of us would attempt them, or want to. They’re…what? Too simple? Too easy? Unsophisticated? Akin to folk tales, fairy tales, sermons? No one wants to tell stories so plain, purposeful, obvious, or full of characters who are anthropomorphized animals. Right? Maybe, but the methods of parables, fables and allegories can give us some powerful storytelling tools, even when our story patterns are not strictly those of Spenser and Bunyan.

A parable is short and has a point. A fable uses animals as stand-ins for humans. An allegory uses a different world as a stand in for ours. Those, however, are only the most obvious characteristics of such stories. Each type of tale also requires us to recognize a truth. Each has intentional meaning. Their objective is not to capture life but to embrace an ideal. Their characters represent distilled human qualities and their story worlds embody universal conditions of life. Their aim is to change our behavior.

Parables, fables and allegories make judgments. They are not post-modern or morally neutral. They assume good or bad, right or wrong. They recommend caution and provide direction. Their power rests in their truths. Their appeal is that they show us how to live. Is that out of keeping with our cultural moment?

Our western culture extolls inclusion and diversity, yet I would argue that we are pummeled by judgments. Daily. Relentlessly. We are not politically correct, you see, or we are too much so. We should work harder but vacation more. We must protect our kids but not helicopter hover. We must not cause girls to obsess about weight but we must also remember that we Americans are obese. Passing judgment is a universal habit and our unending burden. We can’t win.

On top of all that, we live in a world where no one is pure, the game is zero sum, the prize is an empty throne, and morality is relative. When there are no standards, no absolute right or absolute wrong, no guys wholly good nor wholly bad, shouldn’t we forget morality and disdain good-versus-evil, leaving those bankrupt values to kiddies’ picture books and adolescent superhero movies? Isn’t it better for mature fiction to eschew strong meaning, demure, merely “illuminate”, and take no stand?

Usually– well, almost usually– I have my Writer Unboxed posts done in advance of the day before I’m scheduled to post. This month, though, I’m kind of glad that the time got away from me, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to craft my post in response to Larry Brooks’ excellent article from Tuesday, […]

On Saturday, Jo Eberhardt posted about unlikeable characters. She pointed out that what makes loathsome characters compelling in spite of their faults are their clear motives, consistency and genuine relationships. Interestingly, those are also factors that make likeable characters compelling. That started me thinking. What other qualities are critical to creating characters we care to […]

There are unwritten rules. We all know them. Be nice. Chew with your mouth closed. Let others off the elevator first. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Keep your voice down. Replace toilet paper when the roll runs out. Put things back where you found them, especially if they are refrigerated items in […]

A couple of weeks ago I was in Toronto with my friends Christopher Vogler and a fellow you may have heard of, Don Maass. We were there teaching the Story Masters conference, a four-day immersion in the craft of fiction. For this conference, each of us takes a full day to teach our stuff, and […]

While it might be more apt to describe Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch as anchored by time, place and character, rather than constricted as the word “tether” implies, I couldn’t resist a reference to the enigmatic painting at the center of this epic tale that recently swept the literary world. Not only did The Goldfinch win the Pulitzer Prize […]

Have you ever been under a spell? I will bet that you have. Have you ever fallen in love? The initial infatuation is a kind of spell. Against all reason, everything about the loved one is good. He or she is attractive, adorable, fascinating, delightful. That phase is followed later by others, naturally, but for […]

Once upon a time… Is there any better opening than that? Fairy tales are the first stories we hear. Even now, as grown-ups, we associate those four words with coziness and bedtime. From the safety of our parents’ laps or with the comforting weight of Mom or Dad next to us on the mattress, as […]

I’m going to tell you something: thoughts are never honest. Emotions are. —Albert Camus I’m wading into tricky waters today. If I’m successful, I will have begun a discussion on a topic that is very dear to one of our own, the esteemed and estimable Donald Maass. If I’m not so successful, I will have […]

Stories that sweep us away have a magical quality. Indeed, we most often associate the swept away feeling with fairy tales. Other types of story sweep us away too, though. Though we may not recognize our capture in those terms, stories as diverse as dark crime, Western sagas and realistic YA can weave a spell […]